“There is such a great variety of independent schools that it is very difficult to comment generally on behalf of all. Age range, style, admissions, boarding – each school is very diverse. My sector is the day school sector -locally based, traditional, former grammar schools, with generally lower fees and little income other than through those fees. We were formerly part of the state system as direct grant schools, and therefore had to go through many of the adaptations other schools are going through today: we can share a great deal of that experience and have offered to do so. We became businesses, rather unwillingly, but in general rejoiced in the freedoms that independence brought. We are still charities – therefore we have no shareholders and all money has to be ploughed back into the schools. We have had to learn how to manage and maintain buildings, contracts, fees, suppliers and the like. We have had to respond to national curriculum but adapt our curriculum to it. We found ourselves having to stand for the defence of that indefinable term ‘ standards’ and also respond to the market. It is wrong to think that being an independent school has meant you could do what you wanted : we needed to respond to parents, children and our local community very positively or else we died. Accountability via governors is increasing in importance, and the overall school’s aims and standards are regularly internally inspected. Accountability has meant a great deal to us in a very rounded sense. The Inspection system has become important to all – and is generally considered positive, especially because many of the inspectors are still working within the system itself. We have been able to learn from one another. We have had to keep control of fees, or quite simply we get no customers – especially when you are our type of school which wanted to maintain a good social mix. This is becoming increasingly difficult because of inflation so we have had to take care with what we provide. Initially there was a tendency to become conservative in curriculum and methods, but as we grew in confidence, experimentation also grew and we tended to be able to be in the forefront of tackling major issues with government eg the pressure to reform A levels positively. We share the fears of over-centralisation and control with other colleagues in the educational system, and want to concentrate on giving time to teach. We also say to Government -do not change things so much, so regularly and so drastically. We have put a great deal of work into getting, retaining and equipping high quality staff.

We want to be left alone to get on with the job, but are aware that isolation is a big issue. We are very supportive of one another, and there is only competition in some areas ( eg London). My group of schools wants to look for positive ways to work with the local area, rather than be in splendid isolation, because we can learn so much from one another. We do not believe that the independent schools have all the answers! Our desire to help social mobility is great, but politicians generally are scared of having positive discussions with us to avoid being seen as cosying up to what the press call ‘posh schools’. However, there is a real danger of us becoming ‘ gated educational communities’ if fees continue to rise, and bursaries cannot plug the gap.

The independent sector wants to engage, and does so in a variety of ways already. Government wants it to do more eg sponsoring academies. Some can, but most can’t – there is a great deal of suspicion to overcome, and any such partnerships have to be mutually beneficial. The option of the State accessing places in independent schools seems to be off the table politically – but it would be more cost effective than financing free schools and more constructive overall to building consensus.

What we want to do is to discuss various options of working with other schools in areas to further educational advance to the community’s benefit and with fewer strait jackets from the centre. We are happy to discuss local arrangements of working together and provide different opportunities, working collaboratively rather than competitively. Local schemes and partnerships work very effectively and quietly, but we need people with a bigger, less prejudiced and less historically blinkered view to push forward the agenda. Thank you for including the independent schools in this forum debate, because we want to be part of the solution and not a problem. “

Janice Turner (Public schools must learn the meaning of charity, September 20) is substantially behind the curve. Her anecdotal experience may have merit but there is no doubt at all that independent schools do an enormous amount to encourage community involvement.

City day schools in particular routinely organise many local partnerships and share facilities. We would love to do so much more in addition to the £300m independent schools spend on bursaries each year. However, and rather ironically in the light of the rather misinformed opinions expressed by Sir Michael Wilshaw, the real issue for many in state primary and secondary schools is the relentless pressure from OFSTED to focus on ever increasing achievement targets in core areas of learning.

Many state schools would relish the chance to be more involved with our schools at a wider level but really struggle to justify the time within a crowded curriculum to develop deeper relationships unless everything they do can be neatly served up to an inspection team on a platter of measurability. To paraphrase a past HMC Head: “OFSTED seem to believe that you can fatten a pig just by weighing it!”

Children who attend private school will earn £193,700 more on average in their early careers than their state educated peers, according to a new independent report by the Social Market Foundation (SMF) think tank which analyses the Sutton Trust’s Open Access programme.

Open Access: an independent evaluation, assesses how most effectively to widen access to high performing independent schools on a needs-blind basis. It calculates for the first time the ‘wage premium’ experienced by those attending independent schools. The analysis uses newly available data to estimate that, between the ages of 26 and 42, someone who attends an independent school will earn a total of £193,700 more than someone who attends a state school. Even when factors such as family background and early educational achievement are accounted for, the wage premium persists at £57,653.

Although a range of factors play a part in determining this premium, the analysis reveals that the better educational achievement of those attending independent schools is a major contributor. The report finds students from independent schools are more likely to get good A-levels, more likely to get degrees and to attend the most selective universities. It finds that on the best available evidence – value-added scores – independent schools (on average) progress their children more during their school years than state schools.

Having established the value of private schools in terms of future opportunities, the report assesses The Sutton Trust’s ‘Open Access’ scheme, which seeks to open independent schools up to pupils from all backgrounds based on academic ability.

The proposal is that participating schools receive the same funding per pupil as local state-funded schools currently get, but also charge fees on a means-tested basis, with the poorest families paying no fees. Using the latest data on independent school fees, the researchers estimate that applying the scheme across 100 leading independent schools, covering 62,000 pupils, would cost the government around £215 million per year.

An analysis of the social backgrounds of children who score highly in standardised tests shows that selection based on merit, rather than ability to pay fees, would significantly alter the social composition of the UK’s independent schools – with places more evenly distributed across households incomes:

• The number of children coming from the top 10 per cent of household incomes would roughly halve; and,
• The proportion of children coming from the bottom 40 per cent of household incomes would more than double.
The report also assesses alternatives to selection by merit and measures to boost the chances of less advantaged pupils gaining places including:

• Altering the type of examination that applicants sit to make them more open to pupils from all backgrounds.
• Providing tailored tutorial support to those from more disadvantaged backgrounds.
• Delivering targeted outreach to local families including confidential assistance with completing financial application forms.
• Requiring Open Access schools to fill a minimum quota of places with those from more disadvantaged backgrounds.

Pupils from private schools are five times as likely to get places at Oxbridge as their peers educated in the state system despite a high-profile drive to widen access to top universities.
Figures published for the first time by the Department for Education show that one-in-20 pupils from the fee-paying sector goes straight in to Oxford or Cambridge at the age of 18. This compares with just one-in-100 of those from state schools.
It also emerged that private school pupils were three times as likely to enter a leading Russell Group university.
Two top private schools – Magdalen College School and Oxford High – sent proportionally more pupils to top universities than any other school in England, figures show. In all, some 36 per cent of 18-year-olds got into Oxbridge and 82 per cent went on to one of 24 Russell Group universities from the two schools.
By comparison, five state schools failed to send a single pupil to university at all, while 287 were unable to ensure any students on to Russell Group institutions.

A total of 1,373 state school and colleges – about 63 per cent – sent no pupils to Oxford or Cambridge in 2011.The disclosure underlined the continuing gulf in access to top universities between state and independent schools.

It comes despite a £1 billion investment nationally on bursaries and outreach programmes designed to promote access to higher education and ensure universities create a better social mix on campuses.
David Laws, the Schools Minister, said all schools should have “high aspirations” for pupils, saying some were able to send many teenagers to leading universities despite being situated in deprived postcodes.

This includes Mossbourne Community Academy in Hackney – the school formerly led by Sir Michael Wilshaw, the head of Ofsted – which sends seven per cent of its pupils to Oxbridge .

David Laws said “All schools and colleges should have high aspirations for their students so they can fulfil their potential – going to top universities, starting high-quality apprenticeships or getting good jobs in our growing economy. Our reforms to help ensure this happens at even more schools – including a rigorous new curriculum, world-class exams and qualifications, and the pupil premium – are working. More young people from disadvantaged areas in England are applying to university than ever before; more than 20 per cent in 2014, compared to less than 15 per cent in 2009.”

Today’s DfE figures cover the destinations of pupils leaving school and college at the age of 16 or 18 in 2011 – the latest available data. A total of 53 per cent of 18-year-olds from the state system went in to higher education, only slightly lower than the 64 per cent of pupils doing so from private schools. It is believed that many others take gap years before replying 12 months later, which is not shown in the figures.

But the data exposes large differences between the types of universities attended.
Some 38 per cent of privately-educated pupils went straight on to Russell Group universities, compared with just 11 per cent of those from the state system.In the case of Oxbridge, five per cent of private school pupils were admitted to Britain’s two top universities compared with only one per cent of state school students. A breakdown also shows differences in pupils’ chances of a top university place across the country. In Reading, 38 per cent of state school pupils went to a Russell Group university, along with 26 per cent in Sutton, south London, and 25 per cent in Buckinghamshire. At the other end of the scale, just one per cent of Portsmouth’s school and college leavers won a place at one of these top universities, along with two per cent in Knowsley, Merseyside. Reading saw seven per cent of its pupils win a place at either Oxford or Cambridge, while in Portsmouth, Knowsley, Rochdale, Halton and Rutland no-one went to these university

SECRETARY’S REPORT 2014
This has been a year of new beginnings, with several new members on Committee, a change of chairman in January and a concentration on initiatives.

PR is of major concern, and I have had discussions with RSAcademics which have led to numerous moves, the main initial one being website.
The website www.fids.uk.com has been given a complete revamp by RSAcademics and is now much more user-friendly. The ‘School of the Week’ addition is helpful, with also many articles and blogs. I still find it difficult to extract blogs from serving heads – but will keep trying! We have yet to impact on member school websites, so that is a matter of urgency.
Our meetings with the Sutton Trust have borne fruit, and though it was long in coming, the survey to members on social mobility in our schools is being completed as I write and, hopefully, will be presented at conference. It remains vital that we get over the message that we are welcoming schools and not middle class ghettos.
Our Discussions with the Department of Education and OFSTED have also been fruit. We were invited to develop pilot Primary School Partnerships which could be used as exemplars for future partnerships. Similarly, OFSTED are interested in developing relationships with us as centres of excellence in order to use our schools to raise standards in primary schools. Examples of the initial pilots will be presented at Conference, and we hope to encourage all members to be involved, modelling the schemes to their individual circumstances.
The ISSP is re-organising and re-defining itself, and we have been involved in discussions. The main positive will be the establishment of a database of partnership models and schemes throughout the country, which would give hard evidence of partnership activities and scope.
As Secretary I have represented FIDS at the IISP Conference, the ISSP Forum, the Social Mobility Foundation, and held discussions with the Sutton Trust, DFE, OFSTED and HMC. Most of my time has been spent setting up and mobilising the Primary School Partnerships pilots and the Sutton Trust Questionnaires.
Membership : during the year we have added 12 members and had 5 withdrawals

It is now 10 years since FIDS was formed, and we are approaching a General Election, so I thought it appropriate to make some comments as to how far we had come, especially since we have several new members. It was at the HMC Dublin conference that I spoke up for social mobility in our schools- basically re-connecting us with our roots, and FIDS began with a group of Heads who were really committed to social mobility, and regretted being side-lined by successive governments. The political situation was in some ways encouraging – the Labour government was stimulating partnerships, and less aggressive to the independent sector. Some doubts were expressed- were we in opposition to HMC and GSA etc ? There we established a Forum rather than an association, and stretched across the associations.
Have things changed ? How far have we come? Certainly the attacks on Charitable Status have decreased, but politically ? In 2005 I said that it would take 25 years to make significant progress. In many ways we have done better than that. Parties are aware of our existence, and know to a certain extent that we are different from the traditional public, boarding schools. We have been recognised and work with the Sutton Trust and the ISSP – BUT the mass of the public is unaware, and the Press does not really regard us as relevant and still ties us together with the traditional view of ‘posh schools’. There is no real discussion on how systems of education and local democracy work. In many ways we find ourselves fighting the arguments of the past.
I want to ask the question where we go from here. There is much more we can do as a body – I will be making some suggestions this afternoon, but I want to make a few more public suggestions.

The politicians are aware of us – but are making no attempt to listen. They are sympathetic, and will work with us to discuss partnerships. This is all very meaningful – and something we have been doing for years unofficially – but we are being used for their purposes – helping improve the state sector ( which is a much bigger task than successive governments realise). Moreover it is not tackling the basic structural issue. We have an independent sector which is not in any way structurally connected to the mainstream of British education – you could say by definition. We are used as examples of good practice – longer working days, pastoral care, high academic standards, house systems, CCF etc –but parties see us as examples, not really wanting to engage with us in any meaningful way. Their general philosophy ranges from the extreme of wishing to abolish us – through attacking our privileges, charitable status and university access- onto positive desires to ensuring we are competent, providing a good standard of education and safe places for pupils to learn. They rely on us to provide students for the most difficult university course such as languages, maths and sciences, and expect us to create a fuss regarding exam results and exam boards – because it gives credibility to the pursuit of standards.

However no-one has really considered structural means of us helping the state sector in any way and they are scared of entering into real dialogue. The topic of Education is similar to that of Europe – a soapbox for politicians to trumpet high standards, while not really wanting to make any structural changes. Even Michael Gove’s seemingly radical proposals are primarily a dismantling of systems, and setting up a free for all whilst being authoritarian regarding curriculum. Politicians’ approaches to education are short term, autocratic and non-consensual. Above all there is a basic mistrust of educators.

We can moan on about this for ages – but I challenge the independent sector to do something about it. It has been extremely defensive in the last twenty years – defending its position and so-called privileges. Even the Conservatives- traditional supporters of independence, one might assume- have really only stood by and let us get on with it. This was in fact said to me by a Conservative politician – you are doing a good job, let us get on with sorting out the state sector.
FIDS schools traditionally have been different. We have been fundamentally part of our local communities, unlike most boarding schools, and were cut apart from the mainstream by ideological politicians. We didn’t like it : we have been passionate in our dislike, but powerless in our response. Any overtures we have made to help have been rejected, especially since 2010, when the answer seems to be ‘sponsor academies’ or ‘become an academy’.
How has HMC, GSA or the combined ISC responded to all of this ? In a very piecemeal fashion, and very defensively. It is left to individual schools or trusts to respond, and come up with ideas for their local situations. At various meetings with independent school representatives at the DFE, the request has simply been – sponsor academies from your wealth and according to your charity’s aims. The fact that this is impossible for most of our schools seems disregarded, and we are left on a limb, with the DFE and Press holding the moral high ground. It is time for us to go on the offensive, and that is my challenge to FIDS and its schools.

Otherwise there is real danger. It is not the danger of charitable status or inspection : it is not even the danger of fees increasing beyond the rises in inflation – although it is connected to this. There will always be a market for independent education, and, as the economy improves, the pool of parents being able to afford our good value schools will expand. The danger that I see is that we will become educational gated communities. The upper middle classes will be the only ones who can afford to send their children to our schools, and the social mix we so cherish will have disappeared – as it is already disappearing. The public schools pre 1976 were a small elite, primarily boarding, with prep schools feeding them. The expansion of the independent system since then has made independent education viable for many more people : it is of high quality : and the schools are day schools, fitting in to the majority modern lifestyle choice. However the ethos of direct grant remained, and the passionate desire to keep a social balance. We never had to justify our charitable status as a concept. However our social balance and raison d’etre is in great danger – and we can do little about it. We can offer bursaries, but our financial base is insufficient to expand it to high proportions.

Would it not be criminal for successive governments to allow this to happen ? Yes, in my view. Would it not be criminal for us to allow it to happen? Yes indeed, but the great danger lies in doing nothing and letting it happen
Heads are fully committed to their schools – and the school’s survival. They see their main task as keeping the school going and its standards high. They are totally responsible to their Governors. They are not politicians in a national sense. They may be local figures of import, and a few may reach the press by their statements, but in general they do not have time or energy to take on government. So it is left to our associations – who as I have said are decidedly non-political – in taking on this issue.
Another issue is the effects of social mobility itself. Have we as a society really thought this through? I would maintain that different systems are needed in different areas, with their separate cultural history and makeup. More over we need to face the issue of selection – this toxic word. We need another word to enable sensible debate. The Labour government trumpeted ‘Every Child Matters’ : they do, and it did matter – but not universally for the academically able, who have been systematically held back in many areas and ways by government reforms.
Our schools are unashamedly academic. We want keen interested pupils who push the intellectual boundaries but have we seriously thought through the implications? Society has changed dramatically from the 1950s and 1960s. But what about such academic pupils from different backgrounds today ? We say we want poor children in our schools in order to give them serious life chances and break out of the cycle of poverty – but do we really ? Are we too ‘nice’ : are we too middle class ? are we ill-prepared for social consequences of social mix ? what will our present customers think? what will our governors think ? what will our former pupils think – who have rose-tinted views of their past experiences? The very parents who have been socially mobile and got their children into our schools may not want those children mixing with the children ( however bright) from those families who they have fought to remove themselves from.
My passionate desire is that we should want this social mix – even if it requires a great deal of re-thinking – but we have to show a desire, which will make us fight for it rather than meekly succumbing to the inevitable effects of independence and high fees. So at times I question my colleagues desire for social mobility : and as time goes on, and we become ‘nicer’, more ‘middle class’ schools the challenges of social mobility become greater. It is easier to have a few bursaries to placate our consciences.
It is vital that we get this issue clarified in our minds, because if we are to push for more integration we need to know what we really want – and how much control we lose. That’s why we asked Steve here today to talk about freedoms within a free school and academy : how Mike has been able to weld a partnership involving state schools and an independent school which is now tackling some structural issues. Are these ways forward?
Ultimately it is up to policy makers to decide on such structural changes. Some politicians are allowing schools increasing freedoms – but interestingly there is little democratic involvement in this. Historically, County Council and LEAs were brought in to introduce elements of democracy into educational systems. This was too indirect in my view – LEAS were not directly elected or accountable -but there is a real danger we have thrown out the baby with the bath water, and now have a free for all in school structures and organisation, with very little local involvement and control. The politicians have to get a serious grip here, and institute a national debate. We would welcome this, and need to start pushing for it.
I have deliberately tried this morning to challenge us to become more proactive in our national involvement. Perhaps I can be freer because I am no longer Head at Bedford Modern, but the passion I felt about education as a driver for social change I still feel – and I weep at the inability of our leaders to get to grips seriously with the issues. Let the debate continue – but in my view it is time for more action!

State schools are creating amoral children because they spend more time on academic studies than learning right from wrong, a leading independent school headmaster will say today.

The pressure to get excellent results is distracting teachers from imparting good values to pupils, according to Richard Walden, chairman of the Independent Schools Association.

Private schools, by contrast, turn out young people with emotional intelligence and moral understanding, he is due to tell the association’s annual conference in Warwickshire .

Mr Walden, who is headmaster of Castle House School, Shropshire, will say: “Schools are turning out too many amoral children because teachers cannot find the time to teach the difference between right and wrong.”

He will add that state school teachers are too focused on league tables.

“It seems that the only results that matter are those which have created added value in terms of raising a pupil’s statistical level from one stage to the next, and parents are increasingly buying into this notion.

“This focus on league tables and attainment levels distracts teachers and effectively disables them from providing children with a more rounded and enriching education, one that will give them the moral compass they need for life.”

Mr Walden is expected to suggest that private schools devote much of their time to extra-curricular activities and learning good values, as well as developing pupils’ characters.

“The very nature of our schools, with their respect for discipline and academic seriousness, sport and culture, citizenship and community, service, environmental awareness, spiritual life and personal responsibility, sends out into the world young people with emotional intelligence, developed moral understanding and a willingness to make a contribution to society,” he will say.

“These are not measureable by statistics or on inspectors’ tick charts, but they are the qualities that employers want and the world as a whole needs.

“It takes time, but if we hold our nerve as educators and as schools — and that may mean resisting the demands­ of parents who want quick-fix results, or the pressures of external statistical grading systems, not to mention the difficult financial situations that we can face — if we hold our nerve, we will continue to turn out well-rounded individuals who make a difference to society, as we have for many years.”

Privately educated children do well not because they are from elitist or ­privileged backgrounds, he insists, but because they have received a “value-rich education, provided with love”.

“We cannot measure the growth of maturity in a young person grade by grade. It is not a linear progression ­anyway,” he will add.

The association was founded in 1879 and its president is the Conservative peer Lord Lexden, formerly Alistair Cooke, the lecturer and senior political adviser. It represents the interests of more than 300 schools, many of them prep schools.

Mr Walden’s comments come days after Ray McGovern, chairman of the Boarding Schools’ Association, said boarding schools provided highly motivated, superbly qualified students to the best departments of the best universities.

In a speech to the association’s annual conference he said: “Universities and employers increasingly look for more than top academic grades. They look for social skills and confidence, independence and resilience, character and perseverance.”

“Hundreds of private schools are preparing to abandon A levels”, the Daily Telegraph reported on Wednesday. The facts behind this headline are a little less sensational. This week, the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC) proclaimed that its members “are really starting to look” at the option of international A levels. They say that many independent school heads are attracted by the “stability” offered by international A levels, currently mainly taken by pupils in India, Pakistan and China.

It is good that alternatives exist if the government’s interventions with public examinations prove as ill-advised as those of the previous ten or fifteen years. At King’s, we moved over to international GCSEs in almost all subjects years ago, as did many independent schools. Most did so, like us, to avoid the destructive and, it then seemed, inexorable pattern of bite-sized learning, and trivialisation of academic study.

For some years, modular courses at GCSE and A level meant that school children were taking public exams every year, and often twice a year, between the ages of 14 and 18. I used to wonder if during the summer term some schools had to appoint their Year 9 pupils as prefects in order to oversee the small numbers left actually attending school to go to real lessons. All the rest were either on study leave or reporting to the exam hall to be weighed and measured.

So there is a healthy tradition in this country of schools standing back from a wilfully perverse or anti-educational exam system. That is one reason that in the early-noughties King’s introduced the International Baccalaureate, as did many other schools at the time and since.

But it would be a cause for concern if the stance proclaimed this week by HMC appears in the eyes of others not to be educationally principled, as it was when many schools moved away from modular GCSEs to the fully-linear and terminally-assessed IGCSE, or from modular A levels to the IB or the pre-U.

HMC’s anguish now seems to be directed at the loss of the post-2000 A levels, and the end of modularity and coursework – the very opposite of heads’ concerns fifteen years ago. Is this really a protest against incompetent government, or mere coat-trailing? If private schools see that universities rate the new qualifications highly after all, then we will suddenly hear rather less about international A levels.

It may be that “hundreds” of my colleagues in HMC really do pull out of the national A level system, although I wouldn’t bet the farm on it. After all, it wasn’t very long ago the same voices were heard proclaiming the virtues of the Welsh Board’s modular A levels – until there was a slew of evidence that the Welsh education system has performed woefully when judged against the rest of the UK in recent years. Not that this in itself has anything to do with the Welsh Board itself, of course, but it seems to have taken the gloss off the story.

Independent schools should know how delicate their position is. Making a principled stand against a failing exam system is one thing, but appearing to be too good for what may prove a worthy and demanding improvement on the status quo is another.

It may well be that Mr Gove’s A levels are a travesty, as the New Labour qualifications proved themselves to be. Or it may be that Cambridge University’s championing of AS levels is so powerful that Mr Gove or his successors allow Lower Sixth AS levels to count towards the final A level grade, as is currently the case. However, the picture is far from clear, and although I can understand my colleagues’ frustrations with Mr Gove’s impulsive approach, I would prefer to see the new A levels given time to prove themselves.

The vast majority of UK sixth formers will take the new A levels – it would be dangerously pompous of independent schools to show such disdain for the courses they are embarked upon without being quite sure that they had been sold a dud.

It is in no one’s interests to have a failed national exam system. But nor is it in the interests of independent schools to give the impression that no national exam system is ever good enough for them.

The Department for Education was in meltdown last night as Conservatives and Liberal Democrats traded insults over their policies, threatening to bring coalition relations to a four-year low.
A blazing row over funding for Michael Gove’s free schools programme and Nick Clegg’s expansion of free school meals became so bad that the two sides were unable to agree on a united response.
The education secretary was branded an “ideologically obsessed zealot” by a senior Lib Dem source yesterday amid claims that he raided a £400 million education fund set aside to address shortages of places to prop up his treasured free schools scheme.
It followed the publication of a tranche of leaked correspondence that suggested that Mr Clegg had misled the public on the costing model for his £1 billion free school meals policy, prompting a furious reaction from the Lib Dems.
On Saturday night, Whitehall officials drew up a press statement responding to the latest claims but this was vetoed by the Liberal Democrat schools minister, David Laws. In a rare move, Tory aides were forced to issue it in the name of Mr Gove alone.
David Cameron was forced to defend his education secretary yesterday against the claims that he had raided the Basic Need fund to plug a projected hole of £800 million in the budget for free schools.
“What the government is doing is spending £5 billion in this parliament expanding the number of school places,” the prime minister said. “Part of that is actually investing in free schools, most of which — in the primary schools — are in areas of high need, and they’re providing good new school places for people inside the state sector.”
A spokesman for Mr Gove did not deny that he had dipped into the budget to help free schools, but insisted that the money was being spent only in areas where more places were needed.
The row over free school meals has been simmering for months, but the latest outbreak of hostilities has its origins in remarks by Dominic Cummings, a former adviser to Mr Gove who was one of his closest allies until leaving the Department for Education at the end of 2013.
In an interview two weeks ago, Mr Cummings, who was one of the most controversial figures in the Conservative party, accused Mr Clegg of being a “self-obsessed” and “revolting character” who was so dishonest that he could not tell the difference between a truth and a lie.
In recent days, a set of leaks and counter-leaks have gripped the department.
Tory-Lib Dem relations were already strained by a dispute over knife crime, with the junior coalition partners left furious after the release of secret cabinet correspondence revealing the split.
Mr Clegg yesterday accused “an aggrieved Conservative” of “foolishly” being behind the decision to disclose letters that showed that he was blocking Conservative efforts to introduce mandatory jail terms for repeat knife offenders.
“This was a debate we were having within government and then someone, I think very foolishly, decided to publish some of the internal letters which of course circulate in government when you debate these things,” he told Sky News.
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